


Pray for Me

by burner-phone (Genius_Emma)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Awkward Kissing, Denial of Feelings, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Prisoner of War, References to Abuse, Smoking, Withdrawal, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13617927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Genius_Emma/pseuds/burner-phone
Summary: When in captivity, Hux forms an unlikely bond(Some deleted gingerpilot from my main story, full of Poe trying to be witty and Hux being an ass about it)





	1. I fight the world, I fight you, I fight myself

He was counting the days by scratching them into the wall next to the mirror. Simple tally marks, and today marked the fifth line, crossing the previous four.

A week.

He’d only been there a week.

It felt like years.

Within the first 36 hours, heavy caffeine and nicotine withdrawal had set in, exhausting him and yet making sleep impossible at the same time. He couldn’t move his head without sharp pain behind his eyes nearly blinding him.

They’d tried to feed him, but the mechanic girl they had bring him food had gotten on his nerves so much that he’d broken her fingers. And it wasn’t like he could hold down the solid food anyway. Eventually they’d just brought him coffee and lighter foods, which kept him from passing out entirely.

Then they’d tried extracting information. Which consisted of Organa and the scavenger girl sitting in a room with him, while the scavenger girl tore through his weakened mind, quite Ren-like in her destruction of any boundaries or barriers he put up.

Her clumsiness left him with a dull, thudding migraine.

The next time she’d been more careful, more refined, but Hux was grossly aware of every memory she sifted through, nauseous as she flicked through them like a stack of papers.

That had been hours, until the pilot had argued for them to take a break.

The pilot.

Dameron.

He was the only one allowed in and out of Hux’s cell after the incident with the mechanic girl. And today he found Hux curled against the wall on the cot, fighting a chill.

“What are you even withdrawing from now?” Dameron had murmured, placing a blanket and a bottle of water next to the ginger.

Hux didn't reply, he usually never did anything except glower.

He knew the pilot disapproved of General Organa’s decision to let the girl have free run through his consciousness. Or at least he’d like to think that someone on this hellhole of a ship disapproved of such methods.

Hux supposed he was a hypocrite for thinking that though, remembering how Snoke and Ren had taken liberties with the minds of the Order, including his own. But it hadn’t been his place to express disapproval then, so he supposed it was alright.

Dameron’s sigh pulled him back to the present, and he watched the man extract a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his jacket pocket. Hux’s lighter, engraved with the initials of his father.

“This is for good behavior.” He extracted a long, thin cigarette from the package and handed it to Hux, who tried not to grab at it like a child being given a new toy. “I pulled these from your uniform before we burned it. It's probably the worst thing for you right now, but it was granted by the General.”

“How gracious of her.” Hux pressed it between his lips, then reached out for the lighter.

“Ah- I may be generous but I’m not stupid.” Dameron kept it out of reach, forcing Hux to lean forward so he could light it for him. Hux took a long drag as his lungs filled with the smoke, savoring the feeling so long denied to him. He closed his eyes, until Dameron spoke again.

“So the Order thinks you were killed in the Finalizers crash.”

This whole time Ren wasn’t even trying to look for him? Hadn’t even tried in the first place?

“Typical. Ren’s head is so far up his ass-” Hux snapped without meaning to. He fell silent once he’d gotten the pilots attention though.

“No go on.” Dameron took a cigarette for himself. “We won’t send you for reconditioning for ranting about your Supreme Leader.”

Hux gave him a half puzzled, half accusing look.

“Read it in a file.” Dameron shrugged. “And Finn told me.” Hux was about to continue speaking, only to be interrupted by Dameron’s coughing.

“These are shit cigarettes.” He wheezed, tossing the pack to Hux.

“Like you could get your hands on anything better.” Hux sneered, standing and wrapping himself in the blanket.

“Actually I could. You would not believe the quality of the things I’ve smoked.” Dameron raised his eyebrows. Hux mimicked him, sinking back into the blanket.

“You don’t believe me, but you will. The tobacco in these cigarettes, grown with love.”

The emphasis put on love didn’t help Hux’s nausea, though the cigarette was helping his migraine. He dropped the cigarette butt to the floor and opened the water.

“Though I doubt anyone in the First Order has felt love.” Through his haze of half consciousness, Hux still felt mildly offended by that.

“Love doesn’t conquer your enemies.” He glared. “We have no use for it.”

“Yea but-” Dameron stared into the distance. “If you aren’t fighting for love, is it even worth fighting for?”

Hux wanted to laugh at his pathetic attempt at philosophy, but only coughed violently in response.

“Hey calm down I didn’t mean to shatter your worldview that much.” Dameron grinned, but reached to put a hand on Hux’s back. “But think about it though.”

Hux thought back to the statement, carefully turning over the words in his mind. He supposed he'd loved the Finalizer, designing it's upgrades with the utmost care and caution. He supposed if not love, he was passionately devoted to the Orders intention to bring the galaxy to peace.

“Fine.” He closed his eyes, shrinking back from Dameron’s touch. “You’re right.”

“See! I’m what?” Dameron grinned, sitting next to Hux.

“I’m not going to say it twice.” Hux grumbled. His migraine was flaring up again. “Rot in hell you festering wound.”

“I don’t know what you said, but I’m guessing it was a horrible insult.”

“Again. You’re right.”

“Got you to say it twice!”

Hux could only glare in response to his grin. Why was he even here? To mock Hux?

“What language was that anyway?”

“Native Arkanian.” He muttered, rubbing his eyes. “My- I was taught it in my first years of life, and I never forgot it. It’s a dead language now, I suppose I’m the last person that speaks it.” He'd actually learned it from his father’s wife, Maratelle, who would hurl insults at Brendol whenever they were in the same room. Once he'd tried to use her curses against his father, but had been met with a bottle smashed over his arm. If you squinted at the arm in dim light, tiny scars were still visible to this day.

“Arkanis. That’s right.” Dameron trailed off. Hux nodded, closing his eyes. Silence fell over the two of them, smoke from Dameron’s third cigarette drifting towards the ceiling vent. Hux glanced up, taking it from his fingers and finishing it.

“You know you’ll be ok.” Dameron murmured. “They’re not going to hurt you as badly anymore.”

Hux scoffed.

“I’m serious. And since the Order thinks you’re dead, you can easily start over.”

“And do what?”

“Just- think about it.” Hux’s eyes were closed when Dameron left but the pause between the stopping of footsteps and the closing of his cell door told him enough.


	2. Tell me who's gon' save me from myself, when this life is all I know

To Hux’s unwanted disappointment, Dameron didn’t appear in the days following. In his absence the routine invasions continued, dredging up memories Hux had long since buried and splitting his head open with floods of emotions long since forgotten.

But without the visits from Dameron, Hux was left to his misery and bitterness, to wallow in a state between awake and wishing he were dead.

The room was freezing, or was he just cold from the prolonged withdrawal symptoms?

The door opened quietly, and Hux tried to ignore it. They couldn’t be back to torture him again could they, it had barely been 5 hours.

“Hux?”

Dameron. Hux sat up, pulling the blanket around himself. The room was dark, but Dameron flicked the switch, flooding the room with light. Hux’s vision turned starry, but blinking brought him back to the present.

“What- what do you want?” Hux murmured, yawning.

“Got you some better cigarettes.” Dameron slid onto the bed next to him, a little too close. “From the Indika system.”

“You what?”

“Sorry for abandoning you. I was deployed without warning.” The pilot pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and Hux’s lighter. Hux wondered vaguely if it was the only lighter Dameron had.

He was handed a stick that was a little thicker than the Order cigarettes, and leaned in for Dameron to light it.

To Hux’s dismay, Dameron was right and the cigarette tasted better than any he'd had before. He expressed as much, only encouraging the other man’s delight.

“I told you. There’s a lot out there, beyond the Order.” Dameron fixed his hair. “Speaking of, did you think on what I said?”

“Haven’t had much time to think.” Hux sighed. “Migraine.”

“Oh.” The other man eyed him. “Well, whatever you did in the Order, I’m sure we could find an equivalent. What did you do?”

  
Hux paused, wondering what he should reveal. The cigarette had to have been laced with something, since he was beginning to feel a light buzz at the base of his skull.

“Blueprints, design. Starkiller, Finalizer, Ren’s silencer- all mine.”

“All three of those have blown up, not a very impressive resume.”

“Like you Resistance vermin have anything better.”

“‘Vermin’. My x-wings top of the line, custom made.”

“Really? Did they take extra time to make it as faulty as humanly possible?”

“Ouch. Rude.” Dameron lit another one.

Silence fell between them, and Hux was very aware of their close proximity. He didn't move away, it distracted from the mess of his mind, which wasn't a bad thing. It pulled him to the present, and whatever the cigarettes were laced with lulled him into an unfamiliarly neutral, almost calm state.

“You know we've taken out more of your star destroyers.” Dameron murmured.

“Which ones?”

“Conqueror and Absolution.”

Hux winced visibly. The Absolution had previously been his father's ship, the one he’d spent his teenage years on.

“Good job I suppose?” He tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette, letting the end fall to the floor.

“The Absolution made a pretty light show.” Dameron was smirking now.

“There is- was nothing pretty about it.” Hux murmured, a little too bitterly since it got Dameron’s attention.

“Oh? Is there a story there?”

“Brendol Hux commanded the Absolution, raising the first generations of stormtroopers on it.” He couldn't bring himself to reference the man as his father.

“Ohhhh. That's right somewhere your file said daddy issues.” Dameron chuckled. Hux glowered, pulling the blanket tighter.

“Hey hey. It's fine. You're fine.” Hux was sure the pilot’s voice was softer than he intended. “I'm just teasing.”

“Is that the only reason you’re here?”

“Nah. It’s also because you’re the only other being on this ship that smokes believe it or not.” Hux didn’t believe it.

“A bad habit.” Nevertheless, he reached over, fingers prying a new one from the package Dameron still held.

“A bad one but still a habit.” The pilot slid off his jacket, laying it in his lap.

A ring on a chain bounced against his chest, glittering in the low light in a way that Hux was transfixed almost.

“My mothers.” Dameron pinched it between two fingers, looking it over before tucking it under his shirt.

“There's a story there.” Hux mocked.

“My mother was a Republic hero. Both my parents were. But she taught me everything I know about flying.”

Hux nodded along, simply listening for once. Dameron lit the cigarette for him before continuing on about his mother's bravery as Green Leader, and how she'd fought against the Republic’s pacifism.

By the end of Dameron’s ramblings, Hux could almost picture her, a tall woman, skin a shade darker than her son's, battle hardened yet full of compassion and wisdom.

“So what about your mother Hux?”

“My what?”

“Your mother. You had to have had one. Unless Brendol grew you from a test tube.”

Hux had entertained that idea himself for a bit, but shook his head.

“I haven't seen my mother since I was 3.”

“She was Arkanian right?”

“She worked in the kitchens of my fathers compound.”

“Ohhhhh. One of those-”

“One of those what?” He snapped, but Dameron waved him on.

“Nothing. Nevermind. Go on.”

“Maratelle hated me so she banished me to the kitchens a lot so subsequently I spent a lot of time with my mother.”

Not enough time.

“Maratelle, your father’s wife?”

“Maratelle hated everything. Arkanis, my father, me, my mother.” Hux shrugged. Dameron was practically leaning against him now.

“But your mother-”

“She would-” The ginger paused, then his voice softened as he found the memory. “Bring me out, to the streams that fed Arkanis’s ocean, and we would dig crabs and clams. They would pinch me a lot.” Instinctively Hux looked over his hands. They were grossly pale like the rest of him.

“She seemed like a good woman.”

“How my father seduced someone like her I'll never know.”

Hux didn't need the Force to know exactly what Dameron thought of that situation.

“But she didn't leave me anything because she didn't have the opportunity to. When Arkanis was dying Sloane took us and left.”

Despite the torrent of emotion and memory that should be a typhoon in his head, Hux felt strangely calm and collected as he talked.

“Sloane?”

“Grand Admiral Sloane, who taught me to pilot a ship and fire a blaster.”

“Wow. I didn't know you could do either of those.”

“What did you think I did?” He furrowed his brow, half from amusement, half from offense.

“Uh, stand around on the bridge and scream at people-?”

“Besides that and designing half the fleet I conduct inspections, oversee training programmes, recruitment-” Hux continued listing his various jobs, until noticing Dameron’s wide eyes. “One time I did the taxes for the planets under our control.”

“You could do all that stuff for us. Then you'd be on the winning side for once.” The pilot nudged him.

Hux didn’t reply, instead leaning to light a new one. Dameron offered him the lighter, but instead of taking it, Hux put his hand over the pilot’s. His thin pale fingers, manipulated the pilot’s rougher ones into flicking the lighter to life.

He wondered if Dameron could see the tiny flicker in his eyes.

He never got an answer, both lighter and cigarette falling as the pilot closed the small gap between them, pushing Hux back onto the bed.

Hux had fooled around with officers before, but none of them felt as real as Dameron felt against him. The pilot was needy, desperate, passionate. Hux could only submit, tangling his fingers in Dameron’s hair. Why had it gone this way? Hux didn’t know, didn’t care. It felt good to have someone pressing their body to him. He could hear a former version of himself taunting, sneering in disapproval at how far he'd fallen. But his head had finally stopped hurting, and he felt alive for the first time in weeks underneath the other man.

It never went further, since the pilot froze and sat up. Hux slid back, sitting up as well and fixing his own hair. Both of them were panting lightly.

“Shit.” Dameron swore softly, glancing at Hux. “Shit I’m sorry- I- fuck.” Hux frowned as he stood swiftly, then was gone, leaving both lighter and cigarettes.

Hux felt disappointment watching him leave. He didn’t know if the disappointment was in Dameron or himself.

He lit another one of the cigarettes, sliding the blanket around his shoulders again. The resistance were utter fools. All of them.


	3. Just in case my faith go, I live by my own law

The cell door slammed behind him as Poe Dameron sank against the wall outside, hands in his hair. 

Really Dameron? Taking advantage of a prisoner? That’s low. Even for you. What were you thinking? You’re supposed to be the good guy- he is literally the most deranged bastard in the entire Order save for Kylo-

After a minute or so of silent anguish, he pushed himself to his feet and made for his room. His own door slammed behind him, trapping him in a cell of his own.

“What the fuck was I thinking?” He said aloud to the blue-skinned model on the pleasure cruise ad poster plastering his wall. She gave no response, her fixed wink drawing attention to her long lashes and electric pink eyeliner. Her lips were a similar hue, broken only by the thin blue finger pressed to them.

He’d picked up the poster in one of the markets on some Republic planet. His pilot buddies had thought the poster lewd and laughed at him. It’s not like they weren’t correct, the model wore what barely counted as a bikini, strips of glittery fabric pulled tight against pale blue skin, decorated with tiny jewels. But he liked it, it brought vibrant color to his otherwise monochrome room. A reminder that there was a better life outside of the Order, and that’s what he was fighting for.

Even the best of intentions couldn’t excuse the fact he was pretty sure what he’d done to Hux fell under the violation of some harassment law somewhere.

Even worse, he knew no one would care. He wouldn’t be held responsible if anyone found out, but the sinking pit in his stomach would remind him.

“Poe, you’re needed.” His comm sounded, snapping him briefly out of his spiral.

“Yea. Coming.” He ran hands through his hair, bidding a silent goodbye to the pleasure cruise model. She did the only thing she could do, wink.

 

Hux would never admit his first kiss had been to the enemy, but it sunk in as soon as the steel door slammed behind the pilot. He had done what he’d sentenced to death others for doing.

He hadn’t held onto any long term relationships, never found appeal.

As he gathered his mind, bidding his heart to calm down, Hux had to admit he now found the appeal. The appeal of having someone else’s body press against his, cutting his breath off.

They saw each other in passing, but Dameron never visited Hux again in the following weeks. Hux wished the cigarettes he’d left behind lasted longer. Those weeks contained more exhausting interrogation, the final stretch of withdrawal, and finally, the words that sealed his fate.

“In light of our current victories, thanks the the information you’ve given us, and we’ve decided to give you a trial.”

A polite, legal way of executing him. Hux felt Dameron’s gaze on his back, but the man said nothing. He’d been silent the whole time, entering the room as soon as Hux was seated.

That night Hux sat against the cold wall, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. If he were in Leia’s position, he would probably execute the captured general of the other side. He couldn’t blame her. He was of no more use to them.

 

Poe watched the words fall out of Leia’s mouth, biting his lip to keep from saying anything incriminating. The ginger made no outward reaction, sitting straight backed in his chair, gaze never dipping. He knew it made sense, logically. The Order had taken so many of theirs, it was only fair to take one of their most powerful.

But it didn’t sit right with him. The feeling settled in the pit of his stomach, taking root, and growing, until he found himself sliding the door to the cell, walking into the cold, dim lit cell.

“Hey.” He murmured. His eyes met Hux’s in the low light. “Rest of the ship is mostly asleep so-”

“You want this back?” The ginger produced the lighter from inside the mattress, tossing it to Dameron. The pilot barely caught it, before sitting on Hux’s bed.

Dameron didn’t know what to say. Sorry my superior officer is going to execute you? Good luck? It’s been nice knowing you?

“No witty comeback?” Hux asked after a minute or so.

“Not today.” Dameron shrugged, staring at him. “There’s not much to say-”

“Then don’t say anything.” The lighter fell to the floor with a clink as Dameron found himself pinned to the wall by thin, pale arms, and then Hux was writhing in his lap, pressing his body against the pilot’s in the best kind of way.

Ironic that a practically dead man could feel so alive above Dameron, how his skin could feel so smooth and warm.

“You, are gorgeous,” Dameron murmured into his ear, and Hux almost laughed outright.

“Dameron, you liar.”

 

“You mean to tell me, the General has escaped?” Leia was understandably furious the next morning, bidding all the top officers onto the bridge.

“I don’t know, his cell was empty, he was just gone.” Rose looked terrified of the General’s wrath. “Security footage was wiped.”

“Do you know anything about this Dameron?” She rounded on him.

“No ma’am. Last I saw him was when you gave him a trial. Bit ungrateful of him really, leaving after that.”

 

Months later, after the Resistance transferred him to a different ship, Dameron put up the poster again in his assigned room. The ship had docked on a planet, and mostly empty as most of the crew were planetside. The poster was once again the only spot of color or contrast in the room.

“I’m going to get him.” Dameron told the smiling girl. “Going to get him, against mine, and literally everyone else’s better judgements.”

She was silent, as always, her wink almost encouraging him.

“Lewd and derogatory. Seems like your style.” A familiar sneer sounded from behind him. Dameron whirled around in surprise, pressing a blaster into the hip of none other than his favorite ginger. He was dressed in a First Order-esque greatcoat, with thin, plain clothes beneath.

“Easy.” Hux pried the blaster free, tossing it onto a table.

“I was supposed to come to you- it’s dangerous up here.” Dameron slid around Hux to close the door to his room.

“All your men are drunk in the brothels. No one will notice or care.” With a sigh, the ginger fell back on Damerons bed. “Do you have a cigarette? I don’t want to go through withdrawal again.”

“A bad habit.” Dameron chided, pulling the package out of his pocket.

“A habit nonetheless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go, the greatly awaited final chapter a whole year later!


End file.
